Being the change I would like to see in the world

Tag Archives: depression

How does one deprogram oneself from self limiting beliefs and self deprecating thoughts? I don’t really know actually but I am working on it.

I was born into a world filled with people that thought I was a beautiful gift to their lives. As a child I didn’t give it much thought really. It was a given that I was loved and valued. I didn’t think I was better than anyone or that everyone else was less than me. I just was and it felt good. I loved my family and friends and they loved me and that was quite simply enough. Even when bad things happened to me I knew I was precious to those in my world so I could rise above these bad things that were done to me….not because of me but rather in spite of me.

When I was 7 my mother remarried a man that saw me as a threat to his sense of well being. Then he moved his new small family away from all the people that made me feel safe and valued. At this tender age I found myself half a world and a great big ocean away from these loving people. When I walked in a room I felt the energy of resentment and disdain when all I had ever known was the energy of love and peace and acceptance. I quickly learned that the place I “belonged” was not in my new family but alone in my room. My room became my whole world. Finally two years later I was allowed to get a broken little kitten to share my world with. With my kitty, who had severe spina bifida, I learned to endure my isolation and filled my lonely days with a mystical and colorful imagination.

But I began to question why. Why was I so unwelcomed? Why was my very presence enough to ruin a grown man’s day? As a young person I had no way of understanding that this man’s reaction to me was his problem….not mine. I loved him so much….why didn’t he love me back? I wanted to be around him….I was so hungry for his approval and acceptance. Didn’t he know that? Maybe it was because I wasn’t worth loving. Maybe there was something very wrong with me. I became reclusive and shy. I was becoming very ashamed of who I was. I had no one to stand up for me or at the very least to remind me of who I was. I slowly forgot that I was a very loved and valued human being. These people who were filled with gratitude that I existed might as well have been dead. They were not there when I needed them the most. It was no longer enough to just be. I had to somehow justify my existence.

My stepfather loved sports. I tried every sport there was but I failed time and time again. I was not a sporty person. I was a small, delicate child that loved to climb trees, pick flowers, read and write long letters to my beloved family back home and I loved the bond I had with my kitty. I sang and played music. All the things my stepfather could have cared less about. I tried to excel at school but it just was never enough. If I got a B I should have had an A. If I got that B up to an A then I should have been doing that all along. I often remember him saying disparaging remarks about College Graduates and Academics. Eventually I just gave up. I compared myself to everyone and I always came up lacking and falling very short.

As I grew to be a teenager, still living thousands of miles away from my beautiful family in California, I slowly began replacing my step fathers voice with my own. I would tear myself down before he got a chance to do it first. I got very, very good at this one thing…a skill I have honed and refined to a fine art as I got older. I even surrounded myself with people that agreed with this brutal voice in my head which only further confirmed what I had come to believe as fact. “See Lisa, just as you have always suspected….you are ugly, worthless, stupid, and undeserving!”

I am 49 now and I know all of this now to be untrue but how does one deprogram years and years of brainwashing and reprogram with the truth? I don’t know really. It is something I work hard at….to the point of madness. It’s exhausting work, especially having it do it alone. I guess that is why I love my Spiritual Tribe of my Minister Brothers and Sisters. They are constantly reminding me that I am a beautiful child of God. Sometimes I can actually see myself through their eyes. But our time together is very short and limited so eventually my familiar and comfortable self abusing thoughts creep back in leaving me crippled and debilitated.

This is a very difficult place to be in. I am in the in between place of habit and knowing better. More days than not I feel like a deer caught in headlights…..wanting to go and shine but too afraid to move just in case my step father was right all along. Every day I ask Spirit for help in letting go of those self limiting beliefs but it takes 4 things that I find really difficult to obtain….

Surrender. Trust. Allowing. Receiving. Basically to just let go and let it be.

My greatest wish is one day to can find a way to rest in that. To find a way to risk and reach for my potential….the potential to find peace and to offer myself to the world in a way that makes me feel complete. It is my greatest desire to do so and if I can finally conquer my fear…well who knows what can happen.

Until then I will struggle to deprogram the lies and reprogram the soothing idea that I am beautiful, worthy, brilliant, and deserving!

I leave you with a song my grandmother use to sing to me…..one of those people that had me convinced at one time that those above descriptions were true:

Walk in Beauty

Sunny

Just a side note: My grandmother, whom I adored and adored me, had no possessions when she died…except for a box….filled with the letters I had written her when I lived so very far away.

For the last few years I have been struggling with many things as I learned to navigate life through a spiritual perspective. Today is a bad day. I am tired. I feel weak and beaten down. I have felt this spiral coming on and getting worse for a few days now. I have been beating myself up for not staying present but that’s the thing. I have no choice to stay present but my present sucks right now. So I took my dog for a walk and decided to forgive myself my despair and hold myself in compassion. Tomorrow is a new day. I sat down to write a post yesterday and I had nothing to say positive or upbeat. I sat with the broken down laptop in my lap and opened it to the page where I could draft my post and I just stared at the blinking cursor….for 15 minutes. I set the computer down beside me with a resounding sigh and said to my dog “I got nothing” so I went in to meditate. It helped me get through the next couple of hours before I could justify myself going to bed at 9:00. Nights are hard on me as I battle for comfort despite my aching and inflamed body complaining loudly all night.

I am a huge Bernie Sanders fan. Have been since before he announced his candidacy. He is inspirational to me as he has fought an uphill battle to try and win this election…a win I feel is so desperately needed. He sent me a letter today (or his campaign did) asking for $2.70. Amazing!!! He asks for so little and yet I cannot even give him that. Below is his letter and my response to his letter:

Bernie’s letter:

Lisa –

You may not have noticed this, but the bottom of every email we’ve sent since the beginning of this campaign has included the words, “Paid for By Bernie 2016.” And beneath those, “(not the billionaires).”

Bernie doesn’t go around hustling millionaires and billionaires for money. Never has. Never will. Can you even imagine the reaction he’d get if he tried?

Our campaign to win this primary and transform the Democratic Party has always been powered by the people who make up our political revolution. And when you see us winning states and capturing large numbers of delegates before the convention, it’s requests like this that make it possible. So we have to ask:

Can Bernie count on you to chip in $2.70 before Saturday’s critical FEC fundraising deadline as a way of saying you believe political campaigns should be powered by people and “not the billionaires”?

Indiana votes in just five days, and we need to send a powerful message that you are “Still Sanders.” It’s not about how much money we raise, but how many contributions our supporters make in these final days before our fundraising deadline.

All my best,

Jeff Weaver
Campaign Manager
Bernie 2016

My response:

Dear Bernie and all who are busting butt for the cause,

If I had 2.70 I would give it to you….seriously! I am one of those Americans that is unemployed. I “have a job” to the Mesa Verde National Park but because it’s a “federal” job I have to pass a background check. I have been waiting 5 weeks and just found out there are two more forms to be signed that are new to process my claim. I have been a high school teacher and I have worked with nonprofits helping those who have no more options AND I am an Ordained Minister but I cannot sell souvenirs at a National Park until I have proven I am not a threat to national security. I also am in a chapter 13 for medical bills while trying to pay my student loans. The job I am waiting so patiently for pays 9.50 an hour.
No one… And I mean NO ONE wants Bernie to win more than me. All I can offer is prayers, my undying support and my vote which I will give abundantly.

God Bless
Rev. Lisa Day

Bernie is my hero right now because he is inspiring me to never give up…he hasn’t.

I heard something spoken by a woman yesterday that basically said (and I am paraphrasing) “those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and to wait without anxiety because they know the universe has their back” and I felt ashamed for my emotional struggles because I felt it shone a light on my severe lack of faith. But here is the thing….I have faith. I know I will be okay….but will I thrive? I am not thriving and I am so ready to. I cannot even turn to my creative endeavors for relief from the never ending “wait” because the things I love to do are not available to me. I love to do nature photography but I have three memory cards full of pictures waiting to be downloaded and edited on a computer that doesn’t work. I cannot get it fixed because as you know I cannot afford to right now. I love to do art quilts but cannot do that because I have no sewing machine right now to do them on. I have read 15 books in three months (all from the library). I walk everyday for several miles and do stretches but to be honest my body hurts so bad every moment I am doing it feels like torture. I can write but I really want to write something upbeat and inspirational but as you can see by today’s post I feel neither upbeat or inspired.

So I picked up a book today from my book shelf given to me by my husband several years ago called Patient Heal Thyself by Jordan Rubin. On chapter 2 so I will let you know and I decided to write….fuck upbeat or inspirational. I am sad, frustrated, discouraged and beaten down right now…and to be quite frank…pissed off. And I am working hard on my mindful meditation practice which is new. Not meditation….just the intense mindful part. I will let you know.

The thing is I am spiritually schooled enough to know I am in a deep part of my learning right now. I am shedding something and getting ready to have a huge break through and I must be getting close because my resistance is on overdrive and it is kicking my ass. It has been an interesting ride if nothing else.

I haven’t written in a while because once again I had writer’s block as I wrestled with my resistance to my spiritual awakening. Many wonderful things have occurred to me such as progressing on the building of our home on a beautiful mesa in southwest Colorado. My husband even gifted me with an opportunity to become attuned in Angelic Reiki. But as I incorporate more of my teachings into my daily life I continue to struggle with a frustration and discouragement that has tested me to my core. I am still unemployed and I am still an outsider in my community with no understanding of how I can find a spiritual tribe. Oh, I have been hired but I cannot start until I pass a background check. I am in my fifth week of waiting and I have no resources whatsoever. I stopped seeing my grandchildren because I literally do not have the gas money to drive the hour and a half to go see them. I clean the house, I wash the laundry and I help my husband in anyway I can with the building of our home. I pray and meditate and do self healing on myself. Many of my fellow ministers gathered on top of our sacred mountain in the redwoods of California and even though that is what I needed more than anything in this world I could not go. I feel uninspired and afraid because everywhere I turn there is a road block that will not let me pass. Everything takes money….money I do not have. I even took many webinars that were offered for free but these I found left me more more bereft as they only give you a taste of the teaching that costs hundreds of dollars. The one thing I did have was my writing but even that left me as I could not find my voice.

In my prayer and meditation one thing kept coming in to me and that was to just write. I have sat down with my journal and would puke out a half a page that was empty of meaning or substance. Every morning I wake up and tell myself the only thing holding me back from anything I want in life is myself and so I would have a plan of baby steps to get me through my day and every night I go to bed holding myself in compassion as I tell myself…”It’s okay Lisa, you will get it tomorrow.” But part of the big obstacle for me was just defining what I wanted or needed and because I couldn’t define it I would feel like a spiritual failure.

This morning I turned on Tedx Talks and inspiration came. The first one is called Depression and Spiritual Awakening. In it a woman speaks of her despair of not being able to conceive a child. I understood because I felt like I was despair in not being able to conceive myself.

What stood out to me was what was blocking her….as I know there is something blocking me…I just haven’t figured that part out yet. The other part that stood out to me was she essentially overcame herself by sitting in a sweat lodge with Lakota women and they all shared their sorrows. They held space for each other and when they were complete they sent all their sorrows and prayers together through the smoke up to the Creator. It was incredibly moving and poignant to me. I also got some awareness that I was both the parent searching for the love of her spirit child AND the child that just wanted to be loved. This told me I still must make self love my first priority to my own spiritual healing.

The second one is called Psychosis or Spiritual Awakening.

This was incredibly interesting about a mans journey around the world as he interviewed and photographed Indigenous Shamans and how they became that way. Besides completely resonating with the difficult path many of these people have faced what really stood out for me is each of these people had a community and a mentor to get them through it sanely.

It made me realize there is nothing more precious and healing in this world than having others share your journey and hold space for you as they allow you to hold space for them. This realization has made me think that I want this so badly that I must risk trying to reach out to others in my community for a gathering that I would like to call Sacred Space. I want people to share in my journey. I want them to celebrate my triumphs and hold me when I feel weak and beaten down. And nothing is more healing then being able to offer the same to another.

My first step is writing here. For now this will be my sacred space. This is the place I can share my gift of myself through my writing. I invite you to do the same. And do not be afraid to reach out.